Beethoven String Quartet

The Doric String Quartet is firmly established as one of the leading quartets of its generation, receiving enthusiastic responses from audiences and critics around the globe. Celebrating their 25th anniversary, the Quartet here embarks on a significant new recording project – the complete string quartets by Beethoven. This first volume combines works from Beethoven’s early, middle, and late period.

The Danish String Quartet's Grammy-nominated Prism project, linking Bach fugues, Beethoven quartets and works by later masters, receives its fourth installment. The penultimate volume of the series combines Bach's Fugue in G minor from the Well-Tempered Clavier (in the arrangement by Viennese composer Emanuel Aloys Frster) with Beethoven's String Quartet Op. 132 and Felix Mendelssohn's String Quartet No.2 (composed in 1827). As Paul Griffiths observes in the liner notes, these pieces "sound all the more remarkable for the exquisite brilliance and precision of the Danish players".

The Juilliard String Quartet was one of the pioneering string quartet formations of the 20th century. Virtuosity in playing technique, sovereign creative power and precisely coordinated tonal balance with X-ray-quality intonation purity characterized the playing of the New York formation around founder and primarius Robert Mann. Indulging in tonal beauty was not their priority. In this way, they moved somewhat outside of what was customary in Central Europe at the time. Their complete recordings for the RCA label, for which they recorded in the short period from 1957 to 1960, appear for the first time bundled on 11 CDs.

Originally written as the finale of the quartet op. 130 and, in fact, finale of the set dedicated to Prince Galitsin (opp. 127, 132), the “GROSSE FUGE” (the Great Fugue) ends today the complete set of Beethoven's string quartets, providing its crowning moment as formally rigorous as deeply human by its search for absolute.

The pairing of the two works on this album is unique in that one comes from the dawn, the other from the dusk of Ludwig van Beethoven’s career. Indeed, whereas the composer wrote the Quintet for winds and piano , Op. 16 when he was only 26 – the talented young man also excelled as a successful pianist –, he did not finish his String Quartet, Op. 130, until a year before his death. The Edding quartet proposes here the original version of the work, with the Grosse Fuge , op.133, as final. The direct comparison of these two works on the same disc intelligently sheds light on the fantastic distance the composer covered between these two points in time.

Like many musical projects planned for 2020, the plans of the Ehnes Quartet to record Beethoven’s late quartets underwent a drastic revision. Rather than cancel the project, some ingenious technology was employed. James Ehnes takes up the story ‘Our quartet was greatly looking forward to a week of recording in the United Kingdom in August 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic made it impossible for us to travel to the UK, and for our UK-based producer, Simon Kiln, to travel to us. We were, however, able to take advantage of the wonders of modern technology by recording in the USA with Simon (producer Simon Kiln) monitoring the sessions in real time in London A fortunate benefit of not traveling overseas for these recordings was that the days we had scheduled for travel become additional recording days, allowing us to record all of Beethoven’s string quartets from Op. 74 onwards. The four CD’s we recorded during this intense two-week period will always be treasured reminders for us of a brief, bucolic window of artistic fulfilment during a terribly challenging period for the world’.

Bernstein delivered a powerful and now legendary live performance of Beethovens String Quartet Op. 135 transcribed for String Orchestra and performed by the Vienna Philharmonic. For the first time ever this performance is now being released on DVD and Blu-ray. Another definitive Bernstein performance debuting now on both mediums is the enigmatic maestros reading of Haydns Missa in tempore belli, filmed live in concert at Ottobeuren in 1984, using to maximum effect the deeply impressive setting of the monasterys magnificent Baroque basilica.